Boy Meets Maria

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I feel that gender identity in anime is very misconstrued. Most of the time, trans women or men who wears masculine clothes either do not have their gender identity truly addressed, or are just called "traps" or other unsavory words. I thought this manga did a beautiful job of showing the struggle of finding your gender identity and sexuality.

One of my favorite parts of this manga is that, even at the end, we don't truly know Arima's gender identity and neither does he (I am using he/him pronouns because that is what is used in the manga), and that is totally fine! Although he is ... able to work through his trauma a little, it does not solve his gender crisis, which I really enjoyed and thought was very realistic. In many manga and anime with gender-queer people, after their problems are fixed they often go back to representing their birth gender, which not only sets an untrue president that trans people are created from trauma, which is just untrue. Gender expression is part of who you are, and working through trauma does not at all mean you have to assign with your birth gender. This manga does a great job at showing this.

Another thing I really liked is the conversation about Hirasawa's sexuality. He likes who he likes, and he doesn't feel the need to put a label on it. I think this is great for people still figuring out their sexuality. Just like who you like, and there is no pressure to put a label on it!

I also thought the relationship was very well written. Hirasawa did not fix all of Arima's trauma but was just there to support him. I feel that there is a huge pressure (especially on women) to fix men's problems for them, but in reality, all you need to do as a partner is be there and support them. Great message!

Overall, a beautiful story with amazing art that shows the struggle of gender identity, figuring out your sexuality, and working through past trauma. A great read for everyone, not just queer people!

(Here be spoilers)

Boy Meets Maria Who Is Actually a Dude Who Is Actually a Girl Who Is Actually a Dude

This is actually fine read, contrary to my expectations and initial impression. If there’s anything this manga excels at, it’s certainly going beyond the expectations if its genres. So, what were my expectations? At very first, I assumed this would be just another overrated generic BL story, just this time with some cross-dressing gimmick. This turned out to be incorrect, which is good. Then, the first few chapter made it clear that this is one of those manga that while being categorized as BL are actually ... aimed towards actual LGBT demographics rather than fujoshi. That of course isn’t by itself bad, but resemblance to Shimanami Tasogare immediately came to mind – manga that did something very similar but was disappointingly lacking in the actual story department. So I though that this would be another manga that just uses LGBT themes as sort of a marketing for a certain crowd without that much effort put to the actual content of it. This also turned out to be not entirely correct a bit later.

You see, there’s a dramatic shift in the tone in about half of the manga, and it’s what makes it stand out. The gender dysphoria turns out to be inducted from the outside. Due to abuse during childhood. Psychotic single mother that so much wished for a daughter. A sexual assault by one in position of trust. This gives the story an unexpectedly different kind of realism. Not the usual low hanging fruit realism of “We have non-hetero romance”, but a complex thought-provoking situation grounded in what could realistically be a real world problem. The whole story is not so grim of course, and the trauma part is well balanced by the rest of it.

Of course, that is one way to view this title, and it is unknown to me if the author actually intended to point out how such cases could stem from trauma and criticize grooming, but it is how I chose to interpret it. The Death of the Author and so on (the literary concept, not literally – though in this case unfortunately literally too, rest in peace).

So yeah, you might enjoy reading this even if you don’t care about BL works or LGBT community, feel free to try it out. I would even be okay with not calling it a BL in the first place, except for the last few pages.

This manga was extremely disappointing.

The synopsis on the back cover reads, “[this tale explores] the nature of personal expression and the fluidity of the power of love.” And what a surface-level exploration it is.

The first half of Boy Meets Maria is rather trite. The narrative in this section revolves mainly around Taiga, which is its biggest problem. He just isn’t compelling in the slightest because he doesn’t feel like a real person. He’s overconfident to an irritating degree and shows very little depth beyond that. The story attempts to explain his shallowness as a trauma response, but it just isn’t believable. The explanation is ... that since he caught his parents fighting, he decided to start taking everything in life at face-value…but this ideology wouldn’t provide any escapism from the very apparent cracks in his parent’s relationship, so it feels like an exceptionally flimsy explanation.

Then the narrative takes a complete and jarring turn in the second half when the focus shifts to Arima’s perspective. Arima’s rapist is cartoonishly evil, and the horror is gratuitous in a way that feels disingenuous. The contrived circumstances of Arima’s upbringing exist solely to have this shocking moment occur as a tasteless way of giving his character intrigue. Arima’s gender struggles are handled even worse; the narrative refuses to commit to a specifically transgender character while also failing to criticize the gender binary in a meaningful way. The core theme never really moves beyond the cliche idea that “boys can be feminine, too!”

Not to mention, the severity of Arima’s story is contrasted by Taiga’s “comedic” obliviousness. At one point, his classmates even have to explain to him that homophobia exists. It’s absurd that a high school boy with feelings for his male-presenting classmate wouldn’t already be aware of the stigma surrounding non-normative sexualities and gender-expressions.

Overall, Boy Meets Maria is entirely ungraceful in its dealings with sexual assault and queer themes. It feels like a story made for the enjoyment of a heterosexual audience; I don’t understand how a queer person could see themselves in characters so devoid of authenticity.

This may seem like a harsh sentence considering that BL isn’t really known for being “authentic,” but if a manga is going to tackle such serious themes and scenarios, my standards are going to be elevated.

Not every story needs to have perfect representation, for sure, but it should at least do better than this.